Space travel Space probe passes close to the sun
According to calculations by the US space agency NASA, a space probe flew closer to the sun at Christmas than any man-made object before it. The "Parker Solar Probe" probe came within 6.1 million kilometers of the surface of the sun.
24.12.2024, 14:33
SDA
However, this cannot yet be verified as the probe has not been in contact with the Earth for several days. NASA is not expecting a brief radio signal from the probe until December 27 (US East Coast time).
Data will not be available until the end of January, when the probe's main antenna points towards Earth, said astrophysicist Volker Bothmer from the University of Göttingen a few days before the flyby. "But it will take several years until we have analyzed and understood all the data."
According to NASA calculations, the probe, which was the size of a small car, had a speed of around 690,000 kilometers per hour at its closest point to the sun and was able to withstand temperatures of around 1000 degrees Celsius. It therefore flew faster than any other man-made object to date. To protect the instruments, it has an 11.4 centimeter-thick heat shield, which consists mainly of carbon. According to Nasa, it is even designed for a temperature of around 1400 degrees.
Among other things, the researchers expect to gain insights into the formation of the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that the sun constantly emits, and how exactly solar storms come about. These are hurled into space after eruptions on the sun.
First flight through the corona
The first solar probes were launched back in the 1970s. However, the German-American probes "Helios 1" and "Helios 2" kept a suitable distance of around 45 million kilometers from the heat ball.
Launched in August 2018, the 700-kilogram "Parker Solar Probe" orbits the sun in highly elliptical orbits and therefore alternately passes close to and far from the sun. During its first flyby in October 2018, it had already come closer to the sun than any other spacecraft before at 42.7 million kilometers, according to NASA.
In 2021, it was the first spacecraft to fly through the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere, known as the corona. In 2023, it even came within just over 7 million kilometers of the surface of the sun.
According to Bothmer, the proximity of around six million kilometers means an even deeper dive into the sun's corona. "This will give us data from areas of the sun's atmosphere that have never been seen before. At this proximity, we will be in the birth regions of the solar wind and solar storms."
On 22 March and 19 June, the probe is expected to approach the sun again at a distance of around six million kilometers, Bothmer said. What will happen after that is currently being discussed.
